§ Mr. WATTasked the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that the chief clerk of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolitan district has stated that the number of fatal accidents in streets is greater in Glasgow and Edinburgh than in the Metropolitan area; and whether, seeing that a Committee has been set up to consider means of reducing the number of accidents in the Metropolitan district, he will consider the desirability of adopting a similar plan to deal with accidents in the populous districts in Scotland?
Mr. McKINNON WOODI understand that the evidence referred to was to the effect, not that the number of fatal accidents caused by vehicles in Glasgow and Edinburgh is greater than in the Metropolitan Police district, which is far from being the case, but that it is slightly greater in proportion to area. The number of inhabitants per acre, however, in Glasgow is more than three times, and in Edinburgh nearly twice, the number per acre in the Metropolitan Police district, and I am not, in the circumstances, disposed to draw the conclusion that the figures suggest the need of a special inquiry, no request for which has reached me from either city. In proportion to population, the number of such accidents in 1912 in the Metropolitan Police district was nearly three times as many as in Glasgow and more than half as many again as in Edinburgh.